Cryptocurrency Exchange Bitmart Loses $200mln in Hacking of Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain

Bitmart, a cryptocurrency exchange, suffered a near-$200 million loss due to a hot wallet hack on the Ethereum (ETH) and Binance Smart Chain (BSC) blockchains. Peckshield, a blockchain security and data analytics business, first discovered the $200 million Bitmart breach when it noticed a transfer of around $100 million over the Ethereum blockchain. Further analysis by the team found a parallel compromise of the crypto exchange’s BSC reserves of $96 million: The hackers stole a total of over 20 tokens, including Binance Coin (BNB), Safemoon, BSC-USD, and BPay. The attack also exposed significant quantities of meme currencies such as BabyDoge, Floki, and Moonshot.

According to Peckshield, the hack was a simple issue of swapping out, swapping, and washing: Sheldon Xia, CEO of Bitmart, subsequently acknowledged the attack through Twitter as a “large-scale security compromise” affecting ETH and BSC hot wallets: “At the moment, we are currently determining the probable techniques employed. The hackers were able to remove around USD 150 million in assets.”

In what seems to be a recurring danger to the cryptocurrency ecosystem, cryptocurrency lending provider Celsius revealed a $50 million loss due to an abuse of decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol BadgerDAO. The initial complaints of a security vulnerability involving BadgerDAO appeared on Dec. 02, with the protocol publicly declaring on Wednesday that it had received several exporters of illicit user cash withdrawals. Similarly to Bitmart, the Badger team proceeded to investigate the problem and suspended any smart contracts on the protocol to minimize future losses.

3/3 At this moment we are temporarily suspending withdrawals until further notice. We beg for your kind understanding and patience in this situation. Thank you very much.

— Sheldon Xia (@sheldonbitmart) December 5, 2021